Let’s not oversell this. OH #1 only passed 55-45. 52% turnout is far better than a normal odd-year election, but 55-45 is hardly a blowout, especially because it depended on 70-30 wins in the big cities. A huge swath of Ohio’s regular voters are perfectly happy to go along with abortion restrictions, and a sizeable number of staunch pro-choicers will show up to keep Roe in the dirt. Any district that doesn’t include a major metro, abortion is still a convenient wedge issue.
That is how pretty much all states, not just Ohio, are layed out. The USA is massive in terms of land. Ohio is roughly the size of Germany. The play is to get 60-70-80 percent in major Metropolitan areas because the rest of the state is cows and corn. Only 7 counties had more than 100k votes cast in total with the three counties home to Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati accounting for almost 1/3 of the total votes cast. All 7 of those counties voted in favor of issue 1. Any district that doesn’t have a major metro area is not viable. These areas are bleeding money and jobs and losing population. Eventually they will lose enough and Ohio will lose enough congressional seats that it will not be able to be reliably gerrymandered as heavily because of the population being so heavily centered in 3 locations. Ohio was one of the first test for GOP gerrymandering and it is a first look at what will happen when that is the only way they can win.
It’s important to keep things in context. As far as I’m aware, anytime abortion has been on the ballot, it has won. Not only won, but increased voter turnout and improved the results for democrats on the same ballot.
That’s basically in line with polling of about 60% in favor of abortion in general, and decreasing as you get later into pregnancy before adding a cut off.
Let’s not oversell this. OH #1 only passed 55-45. 52% turnout is far better than a normal odd-year election, but 55-45 is hardly a blowout, especially because it depended on 70-30 wins in the big cities. A huge swath of Ohio’s regular voters are perfectly happy to go along with abortion restrictions, and a sizeable number of staunch pro-choicers will show up to keep Roe in the dirt. Any district that doesn’t include a major metro, abortion is still a convenient wedge issue.
.
That is how pretty much all states, not just Ohio, are layed out. The USA is massive in terms of land. Ohio is roughly the size of Germany. The play is to get 60-70-80 percent in major Metropolitan areas because the rest of the state is cows and corn. Only 7 counties had more than 100k votes cast in total with the three counties home to Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati accounting for almost 1/3 of the total votes cast. All 7 of those counties voted in favor of issue 1. Any district that doesn’t have a major metro area is not viable. These areas are bleeding money and jobs and losing population. Eventually they will lose enough and Ohio will lose enough congressional seats that it will not be able to be reliably gerrymandered as heavily because of the population being so heavily centered in 3 locations. Ohio was one of the first test for GOP gerrymandering and it is a first look at what will happen when that is the only way they can win.
It’s important to keep things in context. As far as I’m aware, anytime abortion has been on the ballot, it has won. Not only won, but increased voter turnout and improved the results for democrats on the same ballot.
That’s basically in line with polling of about 60% in favor of abortion in general, and decreasing as you get later into pregnancy before adding a cut off.